1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photo-fabrication apparatus for performing three-dimensional fabrication by irradiating a photosensitive material with light.
2. Description of the Background Art
Photofabrication has been conventionally performed, where 3D (three-dimensional) shape data of an object is sliced to obtain a plurality of cross-sectional data (i.e., 2D (two-dimensional) shape data) and while photocurable liquid resins are laminated, each of laminated layers is irradiated (exposed) with light on the basis of the corresponding cross-sectional data to fabricate a desired 3D model.
Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2001-252986 discloses a technique to fabricate a 3D model by irradiating a photocurable liquid resin with light which is spatially modulated by a liquid crystal mask without laminating the photocurable liquid resin.
Since the conventional photofabrication, however, needs repeating lamination of the photocurable liquid resins and light irradiation, both time and cost for fabrication of physical models increase. The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2001-252986 disadvantageously deteriorates the accuracy in shape of physical model due to ill effect of lines between pixels of the liquid crystal mask and even in a case of fabrication of relatively large physical models, as the number of pixels is limited, the accuracy in shape of physical model is deteriorated. This technique further has a problem of deterioration in efficiency of light irradiation due to liquid crystal.